Friday, April 27, 2012

April 27 - A Penny Show

Recently a friend posted that her son loved listening to the
Star Wars station on Pandora.I love
Star Wars music, but had never thought to create a Pandora station around
it.I immediately remedied this
situation.The depths of John William’s
scores are so alive, transporting you out of your house somewhere else.

With my
newly created Star Wars station as a backdrop to this afternoon’s play, Nate
and Elli had an amazingly creative kid directed, TV free playtime.While Nate has never seen Star Wars he is
captivated by the idea of space travel and concept of battles between the good
guys and bad guys.Initially I had
turned on the music as a backdrop to a painting project.Shortly after the music began, I was the only
one painting.Nate and Elli returned to
yesterday’s Lego play for quite a while, with a much better give and take than
we saw yesterday.I happily painted away;
listening to them play.Spy music is
very fun to paint too; my brush just wanted to leap around the paper creating
lots of stops and starts that incorporated curves.

As a song
would catch their attention they would stop playing and go to the computer to
see what a song was.At one point, Nate
noticed that it was a Transformers song, another interest that must have grown
out of playing at school.He and Elli
stopped playing with the Legos and turned into Transformers zooming around the
room.Elli was a pink Transformer that
twirled.It was not long until they were
looking for the puppet stage and drawing their own paper Transformer
puppets.

One of
them came up with the idea that they should put on a show for us when Jeff came
home from work.The stage was set up
facing the couch so we could have comfy seats.It was determined that we would be charged $ .01 each to view the
show.Jeff, being a gentleman, generously paid my
admission when he was greeted at the door by two eager children.

Nate
prepared the puppets backstage while Elli came out to greet their
audience.“Hello, ladies and gentlemen,
thank you for coming to our show!I’ll
tell you a few jokes before the show starts.”We sat with anticipation.Elli’s delivery
of the following jokes was priceless and had us in stitches.

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Banana!”

“Banana who?”

“Banana crossed the road!”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Apple!”

“Apple who?”

“Apple crossed the road with the banana!”

The
show began.The first round was very
quick.Nate used the puppets he’d made
and Elli used her princess wand as a shooting star.Both shows were battle scenes and good triumphed...
I think.Then Nate grabbed the finger
puppet box, a repurposed Oatmeal box.Out tumbled a bunch of puppets.The spider, dragon, king, queen, and princess were chosen for a rather
complex impromptu show about a spider knight who captured a dragon and locked
him in the Lego jail.The dragon somehow
escaped and kidnapped the queen locking her in the jail.The king rescued his queen while the knight
spider recaptured and did away with the dragon.Between each scene the carefree singing princess took center stage singing
and “twirling.”The show was priceless
and well worth the $.01 entry fee.

The casts from their puppet shows.

Nate
got home from school at 2:30 and I went to grab supper a little after
5:00.For two and a half hours they were
totally engaged with a backdrop of John Williams and other related
composers.Their play often mirrored the
music.It was delightful.These times are so important for their
development.